« "Non-plussed"? | Main | Flashbacks x 2 »

August 26, 2005

Today is the 85th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment

On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted and women in the US were finally allowed to vote. Women's suffrage activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not live to see women get the vote. Activists went on hunger strikes, staged protests, and were jailed.

Hunger-striking activists in jail were often force-fed.

"Dr Gannon told me I must be fed. …I was held down by five people…Gannon pushed the tube up left nostril…It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely…Operation leaves one very sick." Lucy Burns in a note smuggled out of jail, where she was leading a protest against jailed suffragists treatment in 1917.

The anti-suffrage rhetoric got downright paranoid, much of it mirrors the anti-feminist propoganda out there today, with allusions to Nazism thrown in.

Antis also used uglier tactics. Scare leaflets and ads linking suffrage with socialism, communism, atheism, and anarchy, as well the very popular cartoon postcards (usually depicting a dominating caricature of a woman smoking a cigarette while her submissive husband did the wash and cared for the children) were common, as were anti suffrage jokes and cartoons in newspapers and periodicals like Judge and Life.

The activists who wanted merely the right to vote were arrested during a demonstration. Their treatment in jail belied the idea that women are handled with kid gloves.

On October 20, Alice Paul was arrested and sentenced to seven months in the District jail. In what proved to be a tactical error, her captors decided to make an example of the "ringleader." She and her companions were treated most roughly indeed. Held in solitary confinement and denied counsel, Miss Paul was several times forcibly fed. (Force-feeding has little to do with nutrition; a tube is forced up the nose and down the throat of the victim and liquid poured through it into the stomach. It is a painful procedure and can cause illness or even death.) In a final attempt to discredit Paul, she was confined to the psychopathic ward. On November 14, 30 women in Occoquan Workhouse were beaten, threatened, and mistreated in what came to be known as the "night of terror." The subsequent storm of critical publicity was such that the Administration itself soon called for the release of all suffrage prisoners.

So for anyone who's reading this and not bothering to vote because "it makes no difference", think again. I wasn't excited about the options in the last Presidential election, but that wasn't the only thing I voted for. There was a recall campaign in my town, local elections, and statewide elections.

Voting matters. You have a voice.

If it didn't matter, why would crackpots like the Christian Party be so eager to repeal it?

Posted by at August 26, 2005 10:44 AM